1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to hypodermic syringes and, more specifically, to hypodermic syringes with vial attachment(s) that allow for automatic and correct labeling of the syringes.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
In the course of administering medication to a patient by hypodermic injection, a syringe is filled from a vial of medication. While the vial is pre-labeled according to its contents, the syringe is generally unlabeled when removed from sterile wrapping. Medical practitioners such as physicians, nurses and medical technicians, may take the time to manually label a syringe after drawing medication from a vial. A syringe that is so-labeled reduces the chance of administering an incorrect medication, an occurrence that is commonly known as ampule swap error or syringe swap error.
Syringe swap error may be a particular risk in the field of anesthesiology where multiple different medications are used and a particular medication may be called upon at a moment's notice. For example, some medications must be administered in rapid succession.
Multiple medications may be drawn up in multiple syringes and labeled in the course of preparing for a surgical case, however this process may be time consuming and may itself be prone to error. In the real-world setting, medical practitioners may be unwilling and/or unable to take the time to properly label each syringe. Moreover, in manually labeling each syringe, labeling errors may occur, especially where labels are written hastily. Additionally, manually labeled syringes may not be readily legible.
Since over 5 billion injections will be given each year in the United States and practitioners can make mistakes such as mislabeling syringes during a certain fraction of those injections, the potential for complications related to syringe mislabeling is large. For example, it is estimated that there is some type of medication administration error for every 130 anesthetics administered. Moreover, it is highly likely that medication errors are underreported.
Manual labeling may give rise to other potential problems, for example, the type of medication may be labeled but other information such as the concentration, the inactive ingredients, and the expiration date may be omitted. Such information may even be intentionally omitted from the syringe labels but may later be needed in order to quickly determine the cause of a problem in the event of complications, at which point, the vial may have since been deposited in a sharps container and may be irretrievable.
Labels may be preprinted in an attempt to minimize some of the problems discussed above; however, preprinted labels may be mistakenly applied to the wrong syringe. Moreover, the use of adhesive labels may be problematic when working with gloved hands, as is generally the case in operating rooms.
Syringes may be pre-labeled at the time of assembly; however, pre-labeled syringes are significantly less versatile as a syringe pre-labeled for one medication may not be used to administer another medication. Accordingly, hospitals and other medical facilities must stock enough syringes for each type of medication used. Accordingly, the costs of procuring, storing and retrieving the correct pre-labeled syringe may be inordinately expensive. Moreover, the incorrect pre-labeled syringe may be inadvertently used.
Labeled syringes can be pre-filled with medication at the factory. Such pre-filled syringes are available for some medications, but are cumbersome in that they need to be assembled with special injectors prior to use. This re-assembly adds time to procedure setup. In addition, drugs packaged this way are more expensive to produce and require more storage space than drugs packaged in traditional vials and ampules. For this reason the cheaper and more space efficient vials and ampules continue to be used in most hospitals.
Significant advances have been made in industrial quality control when it comes to labeling medications at the factories where they are produced. Although each year, billions of medication vials, ampules and bottles are produced, there are no recalls issued for inaccurate or incomplete labeling. Separation of assembly lines, chemical analyses and other quality control measures have reduced the possibility of a miss-labeled medication container.
However, when a disposable syringe is used to draw up and administer a medication in clinical practice, labeling the syringe depends on thoughtful input from a medical practitioner such as a physician or nurse.